31 August 2004

I had a pair of Adidas in these colors back in the early 1980s. The tower in the background is Riverside Church.

A few of the buildings in Manhattanville. The neighborhood architecture is largely forgettable. I've read somewhere that Columbia's preliminary plans are to replace most of the buildings it owns in the neighborhood. Tearing down existing buildings wouldn't be much of a loss, but some of the architectural renderings of the new buildings are hideously oversized and tacky in appearance. Some of those renderings can be seen by browsing through the university's campus planning web pages.

On one of these posts I'll provide a little Manhattanville history, but not this one.

Yesterday I joined the Slice Pizza Club for their first out-of-town pizza tasting. Ten people in three separate cars drove up to New Haven, CT to try the legendary pizza at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana and Sally's Apizza. Frank's was first. Eight of sat down at one booth, (two others arrived later and were seated at their own table) where we ordered a large clam, mozzarella, and mushroom pies and a small plain pie. In New Haven, mozzarella is an extra ingredient on pizza --plain consists of sauce and parmesan. All were good, but the clam pie was outstanding. It had an abundance of clams and garlic. The simple beauty of the plain pie was also a stand out.

Frank Pepe has an enormous coal-fired pizza oven. Enthusiastic pizza fans with digital cameras prevailed upon the perplexed pizza maker to open up the furnace door for us. The staff at Frank Pepe was extremely friendly and accomodating to the ten New Yorkers.

Splitting four pies between eight people took its toll on our appetites, but we walked down Wooster St to stand in line at Sally's. Although Frank Pepe and Sally's Apizza both draw food tourists, Sally's seems to favor locals "in the know". We ordered three medium pizzas: mozzarella, clam, and their special, a potato-onion and rosemary. It took over an hour for the pizzas to arrive, whereupon the server threw paper plates onto our table. I, along with the rest of the group, was pretty wilted by then as there wasn't much air circulation in Sally's. Our server also chose to ignore us for most of that hour.

The clam pie at Sally's paled in comparison to Frank Pepe. I had too much oil (as did the mozzarella pie), didn't have as much garlic, and the clams were minced. The mincing of the clams made the whole slice taste like clams, rather than the more complex intermingling of flavors of the pie at Frank Pepe. I much preferred the potato-onion pie. I've had it elsewhere before, and this pie was exceptional. The potatoes were sliced really thin, and there was rosemary and oregano included. The crusts at Sally's were thin, crispy and delicious.

We bailed out quickly after eating as the heat inside was just to oppressive. After recovering a bit outside we walked to an Italian pastry shop for refreshing Italian ices to top off the evening. All in all a great trip. Thanks, Adam, for putting it together!

It was such a nice day yesterday that I went for a walk along the Hudson after I got home. I took the subway to 96th St., walked from there to Riverside Park, and then down to the construction near 70th St. The construction area is Riverside South, part of an old abandoned railyard. Immediately to the west, on the other side of the elevated highway, are the new Trump apartment towers. To build the apartments Trump had to agree to build a 27 acre southern extension to Riverside Park. Residents of the apartments will finance the maintenance of the park in perpetuity.

The park is nice. I sat down at the little sitting area to the right of the woman above and took in the view. There are some nifty ruins of a warehouse and a float bridge in the river. There's also a new pier that extends into the river quite a ways. They've been showing movies on the end of the pier all summer. Tonight's movie was "Tootsie", which, somewhat strangely, was being shown on an almost transparent screen. But I digress...

While sitting there passing the time, I reached out and idly started turning the nut on the bolt that attaches the railing to the wall. Now, it is true that I have superhuman strength. It is also true that I am sometimes absent-minded and misuse that superhuman strength. However, my superhuman strength has its limits and I am not so strong that I can undo new construction with my bare hands! Unless, of course, that construction is really shoddy.

As you can see I unscrewed two of the bolts. The railing was loose and could be easily rattled around. There was enough leverage that a more destructive person could have yanked the railing off the wall without much effort. It was tempting, but I screwed the nuts back on. Probably tighter than I found them.

25 August 2004

Bus depot is on the right in the background. Tall buildings beyond the Riverside Drive viaduct are across the Hudson in New Jersey.

Studebaker building in the background.

I took these pictures on weekend mornings. Manhattanville is not a weekend sort of place. Today, Manhattanville west of Broadway is largely auto repair shops, warehouses, a couple of moving and storage places, the Fairway supermarket, a beer distributor, and a few meat markets on 12th Ave. The old Studebaker building houses the Madame Alexander doll factory. There is a bus washing and maintenance facility behind Fairway. There are three or four residential buildings and a couple of churches.

It was a quiet wing night tonight. Four people and forty wings. A nice change of pace from last week's big get together. Over the last five weeks we've averaged 11.4 people and 116 wings. On a personal note, since Tien was at the Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer kickoff party tonight, I am now the only person to have been to all the wing nights. I feel just like Ed Kranepool.

I skipped NYC Icy tonight for a trip to Australian Homemade an ice cream and chocolate shop that sells homemade, Belgian-style ice cream. I don't know what Belgian-style ice cream is, but the rum raisin sure hit the spot. One of these days I'm going to try their chocolates.

The Studebaker building is the large building on the left. Looking east from the Riverside Drive viaduct.

John "Smitty" Smith's meat market on 12th Ave. Coincidentally enough, his new shop will be on the block where I live.

The "cobblestones and trolley tracks" mentioned in the Times article. Transit fans and geography buffs should notice a couple of interesting things in this photo.

The new Cotton Club. As far as I know this is not at all related to the famous Cotton Club that was once on Lenox Ave.

The New York Times ran a story yesterday about Columbia's expansion into Manhattanville. The university has much less space per student than any other major research university and is looking to expand. As I've alluded to several times, this past Spring I spend several weekend mornings walking around the neighborhood taking pictures with the intent of putting them online. Yesterday's story has given me the jolt to get off my butt and do so.

Eric Washington, who is mentioned in the article, has written a book about Manhattanville and leads walking tours of the neighborhood. I've read the book and taken the tour. Part of why I've returned to take photos is to better understand Columbia's plan and its potential impact on the neighborhood.

This first set of photos are of places mentioned in the article. Future posts will move on to other scenes and I'll try to tell more of Manhattanville's history and Columbia's expansion plans.

Did you know there are Lewis and Clark commemorative nickels this year? I didn't until I got one in change a couple of days ago. Needing to have a closer look I fired up the microscope and took these photos. This design is the "Louisiana Purchase/Peace Medal" which, accoriding to the U.S. Mint is "a rendition of the reverse of the original Indian Peace Medal commissioned for Lewis and Clark's expedition, bearing... symbols of peace and friendship" on the reverse. A second new nickel design was released earlier this month.